It has been awhile since the nation got to see Tom DeLay twirling the light fantastic on Dancing with the Stars and even longer since he was the most feared and powerful man in Congress, his nickname "the Hammer" saying all that needed to be said about the brute power he wielded as House majority leader. Nevertheless, his conviction Wednesday evening on charges that he illegally funneled corporate money to Texas candidates revealed that the wounds he inflicted on his Democratic opponents are still raw.

They made no effort to hide their elation.

"You cannot wipe the grin off my face with a stick of dynamite," said Susan DuQuesnay Bankston, of Richmond, whose blog, "Juanita Jean's: The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon," has taken shots at her famous Fort Bend County neighbor for years. "I think it's important that he has to face the consequences of his actions."

Charges ended career

DeLay, a Sugar Land resident, represented the 22nd Congressional District for 22 years. The 2005 criminal charges in Texas and a separate federal investigation ended his political career.

"Today's ruling shows that the culture of corruption Tom DeLay inhabited in Washington went a few too many dance steps beyond the pale of American politics," said Nick Lampson in a statement. Lampson served in Congress from 1997 to 2005, ran against DeLay in 2006 and served again in 2007-08, when he lost to U.S. Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land.

Lampson, whose district DeLay targeted in his 2003 redistricting scheme, said that, in addition to the money-laundering, "Tom DeLay's actions were designed to gerrymander Texas voters for his own personal power grab."

"A Texas jury today confirmed what most Texans already knew — Tom Delay is a criminal who illegally mixed corporate money, ambition and partisanship to protect and enhance his own power and severely harm our state," said Matt Angle, who heads a Washington-based Democratic activist group called the Lone Star Project.

"We can't undo the 2002 election, but a jury wisely acted to hold DeLay accountable for conspiring to steal it," said Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice and one of the two men whose complaint to the Travis County district attorney's office led to the investigation.

Some still stand by him

"Today's verdict was an important victory for our democracy," said Trevor Potter, president of a Washington-based campaign finance reform advocacy group called the Campaign Legal Center. "It proves that even highly placed government officials are accountable for their violations of law. … In moving money around in order to use illegal corporate funds to elect candidates in Texas, Tom DeLay displayed a startling contempt for our laws and our democratic process. Initially, he bragged about what he had done. He should be punished accordingly."

From a less partisan perspective, Rice University political scientist Mark Jones noted that DeLay's conviction "reveals how quickly someone's political star can fall. It demonstrates that there are limits, even though our campaign finance system is set up in such a way as to invite abuses. It could send a signal to people at the margins of campaign finance that you need to be more cautious."